Many employers seek to avoid paying overtime compensation by providing compensatory time off, or “comp time,” to non-exempt employees who work more than eight hours in a day or more than 40 hours per week. Although...more

Retailers are all too familiar with collective actions filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) making claims for unpaid overtime based on alleged misclassification of employees as exempt, working off the clock, or not...more

This month’s headline developments are a set of cases reported in February dealing with class action IC misclassification claims: the highest court in a key state agreeing to decide whether a worker-friendly test should be...more

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued an opinion holding that an employer cannot assert equitable defenses based on an employee’s misconduct in under-reporting hours as a total bar to the employee’s FLSA claim...more

Last summer, we highlighted an example of how good recordkeeping practices can result in a favorable decision. In the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan case, the employer successfully defended an “unauthorized overtime” claim...more

Employers sometimes rely on equitable arguments, such as “unclean hands” (which asserts that it would not be fair to hold an employer liable when the employee’s actions caused or contributed to his own injury or damages). But...more

I still consider Groundhog’s Day not only a great comedy, but also a great movie. Twenty-two years ago, the late Harold Ramis graced us with a tale about Phil Connors, a Pittsburgh TV weatherman, who finds himself repeating...more

Wage and hour issues are a pervasive source of litigation in California and nationwide. To help mitigate this risk, tech industry companies in California need to be aware that certain minimum wage and overtime exemption...more

Healthcare providers are required by law to maintain the privacy of most patient information, and there are good business reasons for medical practices to protect patients’ personal information. In a recent case, a medical...more

Roberto Martinez and three other current or former employees of Joe’s Crab Shack (“JCS”) filed this putative class action asserting that they and similarly situated salaried managerial employees had been misclassified as...more

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit recently held that an employer that has knowledge that an employee underreported his hours cannot assert equitable defenses based on the employee’s own conduct as a...more

The continuing stream of lawsuits challenging employers’ payroll practices is well-documented. A large portion of wage and hour lawsuits seek to recover overtime compensation that should have been paid to employees who were...more

Through a pair of opinions issued the same day, the Ninth Circuit attempted to clarify the evidence required for a defendant to meet its burden of showing that the amount in controversy exceeds CAFA’s $5 million threshold...more

The Issue: Which employees are exempt from overtime laws?
The Solution: Exempt employees are those whose job compensation and duties meet the federal and state requirements for overtime exemption....more

On Tuesday, we discussed Congress’s passage of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015, nicknamed CRomnibus in the waning days of the 2014 legislative session. The omnibus spending bill avoided...more

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California denied plaintiff’s motion to remand, holding that plaintiff’s claim for unpaid wages and overtime satisfied CAFA’s amount-in-controversy requirement. ...more

Section 111 of the recently-enacted "Department of Labor Appropriations Act, 2015" directs that the federal Fair Labor Standards Act "shall be applied as if" there is an overtime exclusion for certain workers who are employed...more

Late last month, the Department of Labor released its Fall 2014 Agency Rule List that included a range of proposed regulations covering everything from the FMLA definition of “spouse” to labor union annual reports and...more

Some employers are immune from liability by virtue of their status as a state-run operation. Employees have become more creative in attempting to obtain recovery from their employers in such situations by naming individual...more

Two districts of the California Court of Appeal recently issued significant decisions on arbitration agreements. In a published case, the Fourth Appellate District of the California Court of Appeal held that if the...more

In a landmark decision, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has decided that payments in respect of “non-guaranteed overtime”, which is overtime that an employer is not required to offer, but an employee is required to work...more

In a much and long anticipated ruling, the Fifth Circuit in Coffin v. Blessey Marine Services, Inc., No. 13-20144 (5th Cir. Nov. 13, 2014), has held as a matter of law that vessel-based tankermen (specially...more

The long-term-care industry depends on shift workers to provide patient care 24 hours per day, seven days per week. But even experienced and sophisticated employers can find the application of state and federal labor and...more